Student House and Procure

From early on in the history of the Institute, a few young members were sent to Rome for graduate studies at one of the Pontifical Universities. Eventually, in the early 1900's CICM had its own house in Trastevere, the popular quarter at the foot of the Janiculus hill.

As the Vatican assigned more territories to the care of the growing missionary Institute, there was a felt need for a permanent Procurator with the Holy See: someone to handle the affairs of the missions with the central administration of the Church, particularly the Congregation of the Evangelization of Peoples.

All the while, the headquarters remained at the mother house in Scheut, the place where the Institute had started in 1862. This made eminent sense. Even a century later, Belgium was the home country of over 90% of all CICM missionaries in the field, the remainder coming mainly from nearby Netherlands. For all practical purposes, recruitment, too, was limited to these two countries.

International Headquarters in Rome

This situation changed, first slowly in the mid fifties, then it picked up speed as young candidates were being accepted and novitiates opened in the Congo, the Philippines, and the USA. The year 1966 signaled the opening in Rome of the newly built Collegio missionario internazionale where some 25 students and young priests lived together. The following year, the General Administration itself shifted from Scheut to Rome. In a real way, the move marked a definite turn in the self-understanding of CICM, from a mainly Flemish group of missionaries to an international Institute dedicated to universal brotherhood.

The spirit and aftermath of Vatican II quickly led to a further change in the Rome set-up: in 1973 the idea of having a large international group of young members in Rome was given up and the Collegio was sold together with the adjoining building of the general headquarters. Since then, the CICM General Administration has been operating from a simple, rented place of another religious Order in Rome. At the same time, the recruitment base became increasingly international: next to missionaries from the Congo, the Philippines and the USA, a sizable number of new members have joined from Indonesia, Haiti, Cameroon, and Guatemala.

The General Administration

Superior General: Father Edouard Tsimba He was born in Boma, Democratic Republic of Congo in 1957.

He joined CICM in 1978, received his mission assignment to Haiti in 1982 and was ordained a priest in 1989. Elected to the CICM General Council in 1999, he moved to Rome for the next 6 years. Finally, in June 2005, he was elected Superior General by the 13th General Chapter - the first non-European Superior General since the foundation of CICM in 1862.

The members of his Council, similarly elected for 6 years, are:

• Vicar General: Father Gaby Gheysens, born in Wevelgem, Belgium in 1946; missionary in Brazil since 1973.
  
• Council member: Father Philip Aquino Yu, Jr., born in Cebu City, Philippines in 1958; missionary in Zambia since 1983.
  
• Council member: Father Timothy W. Atkin, born in Jackson, MI, USA in 1948; missionary in Haiti since 1974.

Appointed members of the General Administration are:

• Secretary General: Father Charles Phukuta-Khonde, born in D.R. Congo in 1965; missionary in the USA since 1993.
  
• Treasurer General: Father Peter Koh, born in Singapore in 1966; missionary in Zambia since 1993.